Coal has been the world’s fastest growing energy source for a decade. That’s largely been driven by China. Increasingly, though, it’s about India too, which has important climate implications.

The chart below shows annual changes in global oil, gas, and coal consumption. (The figure for a given year is the change from the previous year; all numbers in this post are based on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014.) Between 1988 and 2002 coal led the pack only once. But between 2003 and 2013, coal led in every year but 2008. Read more »

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is out with its synthesis report and the coverage, beyond warning of the consequences from unfettered emissions, has emphasized that tackling the problem would shave only 0.06 percentage points off annual global growth. That’s almost certainly wrong – realistic models would predict higher figures – but, when it comes to the cost of climate policy, not what really matters. Read more »

It’s been four years since China cut sales of rare earth elements (REEs) to Japan during a naval standoff between the two powers. Panic spread to markets and governments as people tried to figure out whether China had acquired a new and powerful source of economic and geopolitical leverage. Read more »

Jean Tirole was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences today “for his analysis of market power and regulation”. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that he’s written a lot about energy, climate change, and environmental issues. Here’s a quick selection of his relevant papers. Read more »

Oil prices are plunging. Which U.S. states will benefit most – and which are most at risk? A study that we published about a year ago looked at exactly this question. The research, by Mine Yucel of the Dallas Fed and Stephen Brown of UNLV, ranked Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Tennessee as the biggest potential winners, and Wyoming, Oklahoma, and North Dakota as those with the most to lose. Read more »

It’s been two years since I turned in the manuscript for The Power Surge, my book about the changes sweeping American energy and their consequences for the world that was published last May. The book is out in paperback today, which strikes me as a great opportunity to take stock of what’s changed, both in the world and in my thinking about it. Here are five things I’d tackle differently if I could write the book again. Read more »

The People’s Climate March, which drew a reported three hundred thousand people to the New York streets on Sunday, deserves much of the applause and attention it’s attracted. No one who attended the march can deny the enthusiasm of the crowd, or the fact that the gathering has helped keep climate change on the front page for a week. And yet, throughout the day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d stumbled into an anti-fracking march that also happened to be about climate change. And I couldn’t escape the conclusion that this focus could end up undermining the very climate change goals that the march was ostensibly about achieving. Read more »

For the second time this year, Paul Krugman has written a column explaining that serious studies consistently conclude that slashing global carbon dioxide emissions doesn’t need to be expensive. Also for the second time, he gives much of the credit to falling costs for renewable energy, particularly solar power. He’s absolutely correct on the broader point – but dead wrong in explaining why the studies come to that conclusion. Read more »